what remains an object of less desire, or the hope of possessing it less powerful as a stimulus to producing it. This qualification, as the reader will see presently, gives to the conclusion in question a very different meaning from that which at first he may very naturally have attributed to it. [Sidenote ◆1 The chief lesson to be learnt is that, whilst Ability is the chief producer of wealth, Labour may appropriate a large share of its products.] ◆¹ For the precise point to which I have been leading up, from the opening page of the present volume to this, is that a considerable portion of the wealth produced by Ability may be taken from it and handed over to Labour, without the vigour of Ability being in the least diminished by the loss; that such being the case, the one great aim of Labour is to constantly take from Ability a certain part of its product; and that this is the sole process by which, so far as money is concerned, Labour has improved its position during the past hundred years, or by which it can ever hope to improve it further in the future. [Sidenote ◆1 The question is, How much may it appropriate without paralysing the Ability which produces it?] ◆¹ The practical question, therefore, for the great mass of the population resolves itself into this: What is the extent to which Ability can be mulcted of its products, without diminishing its efficacy as a productive agent? An able man’s hopes of securing _nine hundred thousand pounds_ for himself would probably stimulate his Ability as much as his hopes of securing a _million_. Indeed the fact that, before he could secure a _million pounds_ for himself, he had to produce a _hundred thousand_ for other people, might tend to increase his efforts rather than to relax them. But, on the other hand, if, before he could secure a _hundred thousand pounds_ for himself, he had to produce a _million_ for other people, it is doubtful whether either sum would ever be produced at all. There must therefore be, under any given set of circumstances, some point somewhere between these two extremes up to which Labour can appropriate the products of Ability with permanent advantage to itself, but beyond which it cannot carry the process, without checking the production of what it desires to appropriate. But how are we to ascertain where that precise point is? [Sidenote ◆1 This is a question which can be answered only by experience; and we have the experience of a century to guide us.]